Unchecked Population Growth

1. Unchecked Population Growth Global Problem Presentation Emily Dixon University Scholars 203 January 24, 2001

2. Population Growth, Globalization, and Human Development • Rapid Population Growth => Shrinking Space => Greater Linking and Interdependence of the World’s People • Human Development depends on natural resources and the environment which are depleted by unchecked population growth • Unbalanced global integration has ties to population growth

3. Population Growth Statistics • Recent population growth is unprecedented in history. • It took one million years to produce the first one billion people but only ten years to add the next billion people to 1994’s world population of 5.5 billion.

4. Developing Countries • Most growth in developing countries; population doubled between 1960 and 1990 • Developing countries’ overall population growth expected to decrease from 2.3% per year (1960-1988) to 2.0% (1988-2000) • Exceptions: • Africa: 3.1% per year (1988-2000) • Least developed countries: 2.8% • Developing countries’ share of world population: • 77% in 1990 • projected at 80% by 2000 and 84% by 2025

5. Developing vs. IndustrialNations • Industrial nations’ share of world population expected to shrink from 31% in 1960 to 16% in 2025 • New births as of 1990: • 87% in third world • 13% in industrial nations • Developing countries expected 2.0% population growth from 1988 to 2000 while industrial nations expected 0.5%

6. Specific Problems • Environmental degradation • Poverty • Migration • from rural to urban areas • from South to North

7. Environmental Degradation • Rapid population growth puts the planet under intolerable strain • Adds to the enormous pressures on diminishing non-renewable resources • Causes people to move into areas prone to cyclones, earthquakes, and floods -- areas always considered dangerous and previously uninhabited • Unchecked population growth is therefore a threat to human security

8. Population-Environment-Poverty Nexus • In developing world, pressures on environment intensify each day as population grows • Global population estimated by the UN to be 9.5 billion by 2050, 8 billion in developing countries • population of Africa=3 times Europe and that of China=4 times North America

9. Population-Environment-Poverty Nexus (Continued) • To feed 9.5 billion people adequately requires 3 times the basic calories consumed today, roughly 10 billion tons of grain per year • To produce that much, have to farm all the world’s current crop land at 3 times the current global average productivity • Rapidly growing population leads to environmentally damaging adaptations: overgrazing, shortened fallow periods, and extension of cultivation into range lands and slopes

10. The Vicious Cycle • Environmental degradation could produce incentives to have larger families • Sub-Saharan Africa saw population growth outstrip growth in agricultural production; 2% per year(1965-80), 1.8% (1980’s) • Poorer families may have more children because they need the labor to collect ever more distant supplies of fuel or water

11. Poverty • Population growth usually fastest when poverty is greatest and health and education services are weakest -- in least developed countries and rural areas • Can lead to slowed economic progress and outpace some of development’s successes • Absolute number of poor rose by one fifth between 1970 and 1985, though the percent of the total population decreased • Widening gap between North and South per capita income

12. Migration: From Rural to Urban Areas • UN projects the world’s rural population will reach upper limit by 2015 • All future population growth beyond this point will be concentrated in urban areas • So by 2015, one half of the developing world’s people will live in urban areas • Urban areas absorb excess rural labor from natural population growth and mechanized agriculture • Rapid population growth and uncontrolled industrial development degrade urban environment, straining natural resource base and undermining sustainable and equitable development

13. Resulting Urbanization • Urban dwellers from 1950 to 1987 quadrupled from 285 million to one and a quarter billion • As of 1990, projected to reach 2 billion by 2000 • 8 of the world’s 10 mega-cities (13 million people or more) are in the third world • Rise of squatter settlements in developing countries • favelas in Brazil, juggias in India, barrios in Venezuela • comprise 50% of total housing stock in Caracas and Dar-es-Salaam, 40% in Karachi, and 25-30% in Tunis

14. Migration: From South to North • 35 million people have migrated from the South to the North in the last 30 years • One million additional people join them each year • Illegal migrants are estimated at around 15 to 30 million

15. Controversial Questions • What are some possible solutions? • Where does your right to have children end? • Does it end? • Does a government have the right to tell you you can only have one child? • Are you being an irresponsible global citizen if you have two? • How are reproductive rights and the environment related? • Is part of protecting the environment suppressing population? • Which is more important? • Is there necessarily a trade off?

16. More Questions • Should every country abide by the same reproductive mandates? • Compare the US to China • The argument for abortion is an argument for choice, the sovereignty of the individual to decide what happens to her own body. • Does the argument go the other way: women have the right to chose to have many children in the face of these population problems?